Current Issue
An Historical Lookat Filthy Habits
by Richard Korn, Retired Professor of Criminology
A few days ago I got a call from my mother. "You're getting close to
eighty," she said. "It's time you started writing like the Aged
Voltaire."
"Like who?"
"Like Voltaire. Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire."
"Oh," I said, "that Voltaire."
"That's the one, kid, and by the way, it should be easy because you
don't have to dig up the facts. Voltaire always thought that the truth was
too important to be trotted out on just any occasion. Most of the time it's
better to use it sparingly; otherwise people will get used to it and just
ignore it."
I always do what Mother says. So the following historical account of the
origins of the narcotics enforcement has only an occasional relation to
the truth.
Hooked on Narcotics
The Country's Addiction to Drug Law Enforcement
SHORTLY AFTER MAGELLAN'S CIRCUMNAVIGATION of the globe, a Portuguese ship
foundered off the coast of an uncharted island. When the sailors struggled
to shore, they were surrounded by people dressed as if they'd come off a
set of Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado. Unnerved to find themselves in the
middle of an operetta that would not be written for another three hundred
years, the sailors did what some of us would have done: they reached for
their tobacco.
Already scandalized by their first sight of Caucasians rising from the sea,
the Japanese were even more unsettled when the creatures started blowing
smoke at them. To be on the safe side, the local constabulary clapped them
in jail. When the Dayamo of the province arrived, he approved the decision.
The foreign intruders were not only bizarre, they were dangerous.
But the harm had already been done. Probably egged on by his peers, one
of the jailors had accepted an invitation to take a toke. The experience
was not unpleasant. Before they were lugged off to the capital to be examined
by the Shogun, the sailors managed to leave a pipe or two behind. And while
they and their strange habit were causing consternation in tobacco-free
Yeddo, the first Japanese smoker was probably selling puffs at a yen a toke
to his friends.
After what must have been a solemn conclave of the highest officials, the
Portuguese and their filthy habit were given the bell, book, and candle.
Any emulation of either was strictly banned. But it was too late. The incoming
tide had brought more tobacco. The young bravos of the little port town
were smoking like craters.
Most Japanese were horrified by the sight and smell of it. If the government
hadn't taken decisive action, the threat of contagion would probably have
passed. But-like good citizens everywhere-the better people were secretly
fascinated by anything the authorities found important enough to ban. The
fascination of Japanese adolescents was less secret. Understanding that
their elders would never have forbidden it unless it was fun, the youth
of seventeenth-century Japan took up the habit with enthusiasm.
Out of their great respect for the United States, which had not yet been
invented, the Japanese authorities were determined to imitate the same mistake
which we would make in our war against drug addiction three centuries later.
First they tried fines. The smoking habit spread. Then they tried sterner
punishments, and the habit spread even more. Finally it occurred to the
Shogun that persons would find it difficult to smoke after having been separated
from their heads. When he discovered that the same nobles who were passing
out the sentences and the executioners who were carrying them out were taking
smoking breaks in order to lighten the tension of their work, the Shogun,
with admirable fatalism, bowed to reality and winked at the violations of
his decrees.
Smokers in Japan are now permitted to execute themselves, just as we do,
by means of cancer, heart disease, and emphysema.
The American experience with the illegalization of drug abuse has not been
so fortunate. Once law enforcement was given the impossible task of eradicating
drug addiction, the advantages of a blameless failure became too seductive
to resist. The proliferation of criminal enterprises, a direct result of
illegalization, gave police forces a vast new field of endeavor. The dope
fiend and his suppliers established a new pantheon of evil doers. The public
had a new iconography of demons. Money was poured into appreciative pockets,
only to disappear, without effect, like water in a desert. Some of the money
wound up in the hands of underpaid police officers, who knew a kindness
when they saw it. The penal establishment enjoyed a new infusion of clients
and staff. The drug traffic gave the unsubmissive poor a new economic lease
on life. Politicians rode into office on promises to eradicate the scourge.
There was something for everybody.